Banished from the Fatherland
With pen and lieder in my hand.
The lieder Schumann makes so touching
is in this manuscript I’m clutching.

Tony Harrison should presumably have written The Lied
that Schumann makes so touching, since the poem refers
to the statue of Heine in which he is depicted holding
Schumann’s setting of ‘Was will die einsame
Träne,’ but the crucial point is that it is
the music of Schumann and of course Schubert which defines
these poems, in themselves slight examples of German lyric
verse. This characteristically enlightening recital told
us perhaps a little more than we really wanted to know
about the poet; indeed the realization of the fact that
he never acknowledged Dichterliebe because its
writer was unknown, preferring the socially acceptable
Meyerbeer, and later complained that no composer had ever
sent him any free copies of their settings, was a bit
like discovering how beastly Milton was to his daughters.
No matter: Heine’s poems inspired some of the greatest
Lieder, and the highlight of this evening was a performance
of the cycle usually regarded as everyone’s favourite,
Dichterliebe.

Robert Murray is a young singer whose career I have followed
with great interest after his hilariously acted and sweetly
sung MSND Flute at the RCM, and a superb Albert
Herring in his final year: his Wigmore debut last season
was a further auspicious step in his career, and with
this Dichterliebe he has now firmly established
himself as one of the finest of the younger generation
of Lieder singers, able to stand comparison with anyone
in Europe or America. Murray’s teacher is Ryland
Davies, and his inspiration is Peter Schreier: no singer
could choose better, and these names give an indication
of his style of vocal production and recital presentation
– unforced, natural, heartfelt yet not overblown,
subtle in gesture and in every way conveying a great deal
through nuance rather than exaggeration. No embarrassing
swaggering here, either vocal or histrionic.

Of course, this will disappoint those who like their Schumann
sung with wild-eyed despair and masses of fake bonhomie
at the right moments, but I prefer Murray’s delicacy
of tone, his elegant management of mood and his sincerity.
Lines such as ‘Die Liebe aufgegangen’ in the
first song and ‘Du trauriger, blasser Mann’
in the twelfth, were sung with just the right edge of
despair and without any coyness whatsoever, and the difficult
final line if ‘Allnächtlich im Traume’
was taken with complete naturalness rather than the jokey
vocal shrug it often receives. As his voice is a light
lyric tenor, one might have assumed that he would lack
the heft for songs like ‘Ich grolle nicht,’
but in fact he gave a searing performance of it, ending
with a truly biting ‘wie sehr du elend bist.’
There were a few glitches here and there, but otherwise
this was a Dichterliebe to treasure: other highlights
were the crucial heimlich in ‘Allnächtlich
im Traume,’ given just enough slight pressure to
indicate its special meaning, and a beautiful example
of impassioned expression within a fine legato line at
‘Ach, könnt ich dorthin kommen, / Und dort
mein herz erfreu’n.’ Graham Johnson was in
complete sympathy with the singing.

Alongside this, the rest of the recital was pleasant rather
than remarkable: Lucy Crowe continues to sound rather
shrill to my ears, although her ‘Atchevo?’
had some lovely phrasing; Ronan Collett’s ‘Der
Doppelgänger’ was not well chosen for him,
and Gabriel Woolf’s readings, though engaging enough,
might perhaps have been best given to Johnson, who reads
with the same kind of poetic devotion with which he plays.